Mobile Solar Generators - One Man's Odyssey to Bring Power Back to New York

Shortly after Superstorm Sandy smashed in to the East Coast, Chris Mejia of Consolidated Solar decided to do something about it. Chris’s company is a distributor for portable solar generators out of Harrisburg, PA.. He leases trailers with a solar unit/battery combination made by DC Solar Solutions in California. On a normal day, he leases the units for somewhere around $500 to folks who need power someplace where it’s hard to get. He does pretty well with construction sites, where it’s a lot cheaper to lease a solar generator than string lines to a site. Construction workers only need limited juice for charging power tools and perhaps a cellphone power, pretty much the same thing disaster survivors require immediately after impact.

So as soon as the storm hit, Chris was on the phone trying to help. He called the emergency management agencies including the state units and FEMA. They were too busy to call back. He tried City Hall and the mayors of small towns. For a while, it looked like he would be teaming up with a cell phone company, but they finally said no thanks. He recalled thinking to himself “You need power. I have power. Why is this so tough?” Finally he Googled “Sandy Relief” and identified the relief agencies working in the region. But they all wanted Chris to donate the unit outright, which he couldn’t do since he was just starting his business and leasing the units from DC Solar Solutions. Finally, he chanced on the organization Solar One, NY city’s “first green energy, arts, and education center.” They were developing a solar-based emergency response as well, The Solar Sandy Project. They turned him onto SolarCity, who volunteered to pick up the leasing costs for his units.

Since then, Chris said, he’s moved three 10 kW units to the area, driving the trailers to where they are needed. At the moment, all three are in the Rockaways, which the Long Island Power Authority still has not brought on line, with two more to be located there shortly. Chris notes they are extremely simple to set up. “You fold the panels out so they are pointed at the sun, press a few buttons on the inverter, and that’s it. It’s on.” With the battery back-up, they provide an independent source of power to 6 three-prong outlets, with up to 50 amps. “The moment we set up the first one, a guy ran over to it in order to recharge his flashlight. Word was spreading quickly as we drove off to set up the other unit.”

As the Sandy post-mortem analysis turns to talk of resiliency and hardening the electric grid, resources that do not depend on fuel at all deserve a place in the conversation. Solar/battery combinations are likely to play a critical part in a community’s effort to survive the immediate and perilous aftermath. These units may not provide all of the benefits of the more extensive and powerful micro-grid (micro-grids are isolated mini systems that can be disconnected from a dead power grid), but they are mobile, independent, quick to set up, can be daisy-chained to increase power output, and don’t require a huge infrastructural commitment. And they are relatively cheap. For communities that may not be able to commit resources to a full micro-grid, or may take years to set one up, this type of resource is worth considering. As Chris Collins, Executive Director of Solar One stated “Solar generators should be in the emergency preparedness plan of every community. After a storm, people need safe places to go.” In fact, he commented that after the flooding, his own building on the East River “lost everything. But we set up our solar panels the day after Sandy and we had lights and power.”

Micro-grids are an important solution: a combination of a generator and hardened distribution system can supply reliable and larger quantities of electricity to a small circuit of users including emergency services, shelters, gas stations and grocery stores. But once you build a micro-grid, you are committed to what you have built. Mobile solar generators – though not nearly as powerful – can be reconfigured according to need, and can be daisy chained together to provide sufficient power to do more than charge cell phones and batteries.

This concept of solar power in disaster relief is not new. In the aftermath of 1989’s Hurricane Hugo, a portable solar generator supplied as community center for six weeks after the storm. After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, PV systems were brought in to provide power to shelters and streetlights. In the California Northridge earthquake in 1994, PV kept some communications links open. More recently California-based Mobile Solar freighted 6 units to Japan immediately after the Fukushima disaster, providing communications and battery charges to workers struggling to rebuild. And a project is underway today to create a solar-powered water purification system to supply the needs of 750-1500 people per day.

In the aftermath of Sandy, it is clear that we have much work to do to plan for prevention, resiliency, and recovery. Micro-grids will be a critical piece of this puzzle. But solar generators can play a key and reliable role in disaster recovery and getting communities back on their feet. They are doing so today in some of the hardest hit areas of the East Coast, and they merit serious consideration..